Automaticity in social-cognitive processesFeature Review Automaticity in social-cognitive processes John A. Bargh, Kay L. Schwader, Sarah E. Hailey, Rebecca L. Dyer, and Erica J. Boothby

Feature Review

Automaticity in social-cognitiveprocessesJohn A. Bargh, Kay L. Schwader, Sarah E. Hailey, Rebecca L. Dyer, andErica J. Boothby

Yale University, Department of Psychology, 2 Hillhouse Avenue, New Haven, CT 06520, USA

Review

Over the past several years, the concept of automaticityof higher cognitive processes has permeated nearly alldomains of psychological research. In this review, wehighlight insights arising from studies in decision-mak-ing, moral judgments, close relationships, emotionalprocesses, face perception and social judgment, motiva-tion and goal pursuit, conformity and behavioral conta-gion, embodied cognition, and the emergence of higher-level automatic processes in early childhood. Takentogether, recent work in these domains demonstratesthat automaticity does not result exclusively from aprocess of skill acquisition (in which a process alwaysbegins as a conscious and deliberate one, becomingcapable of automatic operation only with frequentuse) – there are evolved substrates and early childhoodlearning mechanisms involved as well.

The pervasive role of automaticity in psychologicaltheory and researchIf there is one major trend in research on automaticity ofthe higher mental processes over the past few years, it isthat the concept has now permeated nearly all psychologi-cal domains. What began 30 years ago with some tentativesteps into the notion that some basic social-perceptualprocesses, such as impression formation and stereotyping,could have efficient and unintentional components (that is,influences that operate outside of one’s conscious aware-ness) [1], has now become a staple and indispensableconstruct for the explanation and prediction of almostall psychological phenomena. In this concise review of aburgeoning literature we seek to present the highlightsand some representative studies in (i) behavior contagionand conformity, (ii) face perception and social judgment,(iii) embodiment, or the automatic influence of concretephysical states and experiences on abstract psychologicaland interpersonal processes, (iv) emotion regulation, (v)moral judgments, (vi) motivation and goal pursuit, (vii) theemergence of higher-level automatic processes in earlychildhood, (viii) decision making, and (ix) relationshipformation and maintenance (Table 1).

In keeping with our intended focus on the new, emerg-ing domains of automaticity research, we did not includehere the most recent developments in the longest-standingdomain of social automaticity research, that of attitudes

Corresponding author: Bargh, J.A. ([email protected]).

1364-6613/$ – see front matter � 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.101

and prejudice in adults (see [2]); instead we devoteattention to the new emerging research on attitudes andprejudice in very young children (see the section on devel-opment).

The second major trend in automaticity research hasbeen the growing recognition that not all higher-levelautomatic processes are put in place via a process of skillacquisition (e.g., [3]), in which a mental process starts outas conscious and effortful and only with frequent andconsistent practice and experience becomes efficient andautomatic. Early childhood studies and research on em-bodied influences have shown how innate processes andthose acquired in very early childhood (such as conceptsabout the physical world and physical experiences) canexert an automatic, nonconscious influence on the highermental processes, without starting out as a consciousprocess (see [4]).

Several forms of automatic influence are driven byeffortless perceptual activity regarding the outside world,such as behavioral contagion or conformity effects trig-gered by the perception of others’ behavior and immediateimpressions of others based on their facial features orexpressions alone, whereas others are driven by automaticsensory perception and the perception of internal states asin embodied cognition and emotional influences, includingemotional influences on moral judgment. These can bethought of as ‘preconscious’ automatic phenomena [1],because they are generated from effortless sensory orperceptual activity and then serve as implicit, unappreci-ated inputs into conscious and deliberate processes. Amajor development over the past decade and especiallythe past 5 years has been the inclusion of motivational andgoal pursuit processes into this category of preconsciouslyautomatic processes. Research has shown that goal pur-suits can become activated (primed) by relevant situationalfeatures; they then operate outside of conscious awarenessand guidance. Other forms of automaticity are conse-quences of prior conscious and intentional thought, suchas unconscious components in consciously intended deci-sion-making processes and those that support one’s con-scious commitment to a relationship partner; these can beconsidered as ‘postconscious’ or (better still) ‘goal-depen-dent’ forms of higher-level automatic processes (see [1];also [5]).

We will present representative recent studies of auto-matic influences on such higher order phenomena as social

6/j.tics.2012.10.002 Trends in Cognitive Sciences, December 2012, Vol. 16, No. 12 593

mailto:[email protected]

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2012.10.002

Table 1. Domains of automaticity research

Type of automaticity Domains

Preconscious automaticity:

Generated from effortless sensory or perceptual activity to then serve as implicit,

unappreciated inputs into conscious and deliberate processes, or directly activate

higher mental processes such as goal pursuit and social behavior

Behavior contagion and conformity (see text)

Consumer behavior [160]

Developmental: early childhood (see text)

Embodiment (see text)

Emotion regulation (see text)

Evolutionary influences [161]

Face perception and social judgment (see text)

Health psychology [162]

Implicit attitude influences [163]

Moral judgments (see text)

Motivation and goal pursuit (see text)

Stereotyping and prejudice [2]

Postconscious (goal-dependent) automaticity:

Dependent on prior or concurrent conscious and intentional thought

Attention and motor performance [164]

Cognitive skill acquisition [165,166]

Decision-making (see text)

Relationship formation and maintenance (see text)

Review Trends in Cognitive Sciences December 2012, Vol. 16, No. 12

behavior, self-regulation, moral judgments, close relation-ships, and decision making, organized in terms of whetherthese require only the presence of the triggering sensory orperceptual experience (preconscious) or are dependent onthe additional context of an active motivational state (goal-dependent) for their operation. As will be seen, occasionallythe sensory or perceptual experiences can be carry-overreactions from one context to the next, as in embodiment ormoral judgment research, in which emotional disgust orguilt reactions influence subsequent information proces-sing and behavioral responses. We will focus on the under-lying mechanism or source of the automaticity effect,sometimes evolved or hard-wired, sometimes from earlyexperience (including absorption of cultural beliefs in thevery young), as well as the traditionally researched sourceof automaticity from skill acquisition. We draw the generalconclusion that each new field that includes a consider-ation of automatic processes in accounting for their centralphenomena is profiting by increased power of its models inaccounting for heretofore unexplained variance. For exam-ple, a consideration of automatic, nonconscious influenceshas proven a boon to understanding the causes of counter-productive unhealthy behaviors and formerly unexplainedsources of romantic attraction.

Preconscious automaticityBehavior contagion and conformity

Past research on the automatic link between social percep-tion and behavior established that the mere perception ofthe physical behavior of others [6], as well as the automaticactivation of the more abstract category memberships (e.g.,racial, gender, role-related) that occurs passively in thecourse of person perception, results in increased tendenciesto behave in the same way oneself (i.e., the ‘perception-behavior link’; [7]). In this way, the same stimuli that inthe normal course of social perception activate mentalrepresentations of different categories of people and (at amore micro level) what they are currently doing also natu-rally increase the likelihood that one will behave the sameway oneself. Recent reviews of this behavior-priming litera-ture (e.g., [8]) have concluded that this is now a well-estab-lished finding, such that contemporary research has moved

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on to questions of limits, constraints, and moderators of thebasic effect (Figure 1). Other research now focuses on thepotential social consequences of natural imitation and mim-icry tendencies.

Regarding moderators and mechanisms, the social con-sequences of behavior contagion appear to be mediated by itseffect on self-construal. This was first demonstrated by Hulland colleagues [9] across five studies in which stereotypes,emotional faces, and achievement-related primes were pre-sented either subliminally or supraliminally. Implicit elder-ly-stereotype primes caused participants subsequently towalk more slowly (Studies 1 and 2), replicating the originalelderly stereotype priming effect on behavior [10], but thiseffect was found only for dispositionally high self-conscious,not low self-conscious, individuals. In other experiments,subliminal achievement primes produced improved taskperformance compared to a control group (Study 3) andsubliminal angry faces significantly increased blood pres-sure compared to a subliminal relaxation prime (Studies 4and 5), but again, only for high self-conscious participants.In harmony with these findings, manipulations of self-fo-cused attention also moderate behavior priming effects:DeMarree and Loersch [11] manipulated attentional focusto the self versus to other aspects of the current environmentand found that aggressive behavior could be primed onlywhen attention was focused on oneself. Focusing attentionon someone else instead allows priming effects on the per-ception of that person (e.g., that they are more aggressive innature), but not on self-perception, and the reverse is truewhen attention is self-focused. Emerging research findingsare consistently showing that primed constructs are mostimpactful on behavior when they are integrated into one’scurrent or ‘working’ self-concept and considered to be self-descriptive [12].

Relatedly, priming responses appear to be ‘full body’responses in that the identical priming event (e.g., syno-nyms of ‘achievement’) can influence perception, behavior,as well as goal pursuit, depending merely on which depen-dent measure the researcher happens to be collecting. Inother words, the prime manipulation in any single studysets all of these effects into motion simultaneously, as if acomplex ‘role’ or ‘persona’ is being activated instead of

Percep�on of others’behavior

Mimicry/Imita�onIncreased by:

• Self-focus• Ingroup membership• Need to affiliate• Liking of other

• Coopera�on• Liking of you by other• Facilita�on of joint ac�vity• Conformity

TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences

Figure 1. Mechanisms of behavior contagion and conformity.


process-specific (e.g., perceptual or behavioral) constructsalone [13,14]. Thus, not only does priming with elderly-related stimuli cause a participant to walk more slowly(behavioral effect), but it also affects the participants’perceptions of the environment in stereotype-consistentways: estimating a hill to be steeper and the distanceacross a grassy field to be longer compared to the estimatesmade by a control group [15]. It is as if the active self-concepts of the experimental group participants took onthe role or persona of an elderly person.

Related to the mediating role of the self-concept inautomatic behavior priming effects, behavioral tendenciesproduced by social perception also seem to be constrainedby positive or at least non-negative feelings towards theperceived target. Thus, in another replication of the elder-ly-walking-slow priming effect [16], the effect was obtainedmainly for those who reported liking elderly people and notfor those who reported disliking the elderly. Subsequentresearch has similarly shown that natural mimicry ten-dencies do not apply when the other person is a member ofan outgroup (see [17]). And, although being mimicked byanother person typically creates feelings of bonding ([6],Study 2) and social warmth (as well as physical warmth;see section on embodiment), being mimicked by an out-group member has the opposite effect and actually ‘leavesone cold’ [18]. Imitation and mimicry may thus be thedefault mechanism, occurring with new acquaintances,as well as members of one’s social groups, but disappearsor even reverses in the presence of outgroup members.

Assuming that most people have a favorable view ofthemselves, these two lines of evidence – that the self-concept and also positive feelings towards the target arenecessary ingredients for mimicry and behavior contagioneffects – suggest that positive affect plays an importantgatekeeping role in allowing perceptual activation to flowautomatically to overt behavioral tendencies. Supportingthis conclusion is the finding by Leighton and colleagues[19] that boosting prosocial feelings in general causes asubsequent increase in automatic imitation tendencies,which also suggests that the relation between mimicryand the positivity of social attitudes is bidirectional.

With respect to consequences, Chartrand and Bargh [6]originally found that being mimicked by a stranger createdfeelings of bonding and liking towards the stranger, serv-ing as a kind of ‘social glue’. More recent research hasshown that mimicry can also increase interpersonal har-mony when it is automatically elicited by feelings of socialexclusion [20]. Having recently been excluded by partici-pants in a joint activity automatically increases tendenciesto mimic others in a subsequent situation, which again hasthe effect of increasing liking and feelings of closeness

between the interactants. Mimicry also has the positiveconsequence of enhancing individuals’ ability to succeed injoint-action tasks by honing their perceptual sensitivity toothers’ motions [21].

A particularly intense form of mimicry is when two ormore individuals engage in the same behavior not insequence, but at the same time. Such synchronized behav-ior is argued by Wiltermuth and Heath [22] to foster groupcohesion and cooperation, and for this reason has been ahistorically important component of group rituals (e.g.,marching armies; standing, sitting, kneeling, singing atthe same time in religious services) for millennia. Further,the degree of interpersonal behavioral synchrony thatpeople exhibit predicts their subsequent degree of affilia-tive behavior [23].

Clearly, automatic mimicry and behavior contagiontendencies are powerful sources of conformity tendencieswithin society. The automaticity of conformity effects helpsus understand social issues, such as how anti-social behav-ior (e.g., copy-cat crimes) may spread in societal contexts; italso suggests solutions for preventing it. Simply seeingevidence that social norm violations have been committedin the recent past – such as when viewing graffiti scrawledon city walls or litter on the streets – leads to the generalspreading of disorder and crime. In a set of field experi-ments, Keizer and colleagues [24] found that people weremore likely to behave in unscrupulous ways, such aslittering, stealing, or disobeying posted signs, in contextswhere there was evidence of past disorder (e.g., graffiti,litter). Behavior priming thus has real social consequencesand can occur even in the absence of the original actors andthe actual behavior being mimicked – when only vestiges ofthe relevant behavior remain.

Face perception and social judgment

A powerful form of preconscious automaticity for theimpressions and other important judgments we makeabout other people concerns the immediate appraisal offaces. Early studies on this topic found that rapid judg-ments of a person’s competence, based solely on facialappearance and with faces presented for merely millisec-onds, successfully predict the outcome of elections inwhich those target people were candidates [25,26]. Moregenerally, judgments of specific traits based on facial ap-pearance occur very rapidly, with brief presentations offaces leading to spontaneous inferences about the trust-worthiness and competence of the target person [27,28].Evidence also shows that people are able to automaticallyinfer the preferences of others from spontaneous facialexpressions [29]. An important question for further re-search is whether or not these automatic inferences are

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accurate – an especially important question given the ap-parent automaticity and strong confidence we have in ourjudgments of others based on their faces alone. Emergingresearch indicates that, overall, people tend to rely too muchon appearance when making these trait and other judg-ments, assigning facial appearance too much weight insubsequent decisions about the person than is merited[30,31].

Embodiment

One of the major new areas of automaticity research hasbeen on embodied emotion and cognition (e.g., [32]), inparticular the strong associations between metaphoricallyrelated physical and psychological concepts [33,34], suchthat activation automatically spreads from concepts acti-vated by physical experiences to their metaphorically-re-lated social and psychological concepts. For example,physical sensations of surface hardness prime more ab-stract notions of difficulty, physical heaviness activatesnotions of seriousness [35], and briefly holding a warmcup of coffee produces feelings of social warmth (generosity,trust; [36]), and other physical warmth experiences can beused to satisfy needs for social warmth [37].

The physical experiences also produce behavioral effectsin line with the associated abstract content; for example,people compromise more in price negotiations when sittingon soft versus hard chairs [35] and prefer to wash their handsmore after remembering a past guilty behavior, as thoughthey were ‘washing away their sins’ [38]. Indeed, handwashing can ‘wipe away’ psychological states: physical clean-ing experiences have been found to wipe away post-decisiondissonance and priming effects of the recent past [39,40]. Forexample, hand washing altered risk-taking strategies bywiping away the influence of good and bad luck experiences(reducing risk-taking behavior in the former and increasingit in the latter; [41]); the slate clearing effects of cleansing areindiscriminate and impact even desirable states. Socialvariables such as relative power seem to be mapped ontospatial dimensions as well: target people presented at thetop of a display are rated as more powerful than those whohappen to be presented lower down [42].

The automatic associations between metaphorically-re-lated physical and psychological concepts appear to be bi-directional. For example, physical warmth experiencesproduce feelings of social warmth, such that people feelcloser to each other on a variety of dependent measures[43]; in turn, manipulations of social warmth and close-ness, such as discovering one has similar attitudes andvalues as the target person, cause participants to estimatethe room temperature as higher [44].

Table 2. Three potential mechanisms for embodiment effects

Origin Theoretical mechanism Sa

Phylogenetic Evolved associative connections An

ph

di

Ontogenetic Early perceptual and sensory experience

of the physical world

Ps

ex

Semantic Acquired associations and metaphors Cu

an

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‘Power posing’ is another emerging topic in embodimentresearch. Not only does power posing, or the incidentaladoption of open and expansive bodily positioning, producepsychological and behavior changes such as increasedfeelings of power and risk tolerance, but it also producesneuroendocrine changes by increasing testosterone (thedominance hormone) and decreasing cortisol (the stresshormone; [45]). Accordingly, high-power posers show in-creased confidence in decision-making, as well as a prefer-ence for decision-consistent information [46].

Demonstrations of metaphorical or embodied cognitioneffects have become so widespread in the literature thatrecent reviews of the domain (e.g., [47]) are now calling formore ‘second generation’ research that identifies boundaryconditions (e.g., [48]), mediators (e.g., [49]), action-relevantcontexts (e.g., [50]), and individual differences (e.g., [51]). Ithas become clear that more than one mechanism is proba-bly involved in producing these effects (Table 2). Someappear to be semantic in nature (e.g., the physical conceptof ‘hardness’ accrues additional meanings over time suchas ‘difficulty’), whereas others – the more pan-culturalones, such as physical and social warmth and coldness(see [52]) – may be hard-wired [49]. For example, experi-ences of social exclusion (social coldness) literally reducebodily temperature (physical coldness; [53]). Another likelymechanism is early learning: Mandler [54] has argued thatphysical concepts serve as the bridge for the pre-verbalchild to acquisition of language (such that the later-form-ing abstract concepts are scaffolded or built onto the pre-existing physical correlates), and, as the seminal attach-ment theorist John Bowlby argued [55], in infancy feelingsof social closeness (trust, affection) are naturally conflatedwith physical closeness (e.g., being held close duringbreast-feeding).

Theoretically, scaffolding theory [56], in harmony withMandler’s [54] original work on early concept formation,posits that early sensorimotor experience (e.g., distancecues, temperature, cleanliness) serves as a mental founda-tion for later, more abstract, constructs, producing strongassociative connections that persist in influence through-out the lifespan. In addition, innate and evolved motivesand processes can serve as the foundation for later-devel-oping abstract concepts and processes, in keeping with thebasic brain-developmental principle of ‘neural re-use’ [57].Thus, more abstract social and psychological processes areargued to make use of pre-existing circuits and systems ifat all possible. For example, Eisenberger et al. [58] foundthat the social pain and distress caused by rejection experi-ences activates the same brain regions involved in theexperience of physical pain.

mple evidence

atomical connection in insula between social warmth/coldness and

ysical warmth/coldness [49], combined with pan-cultural emphasis of

mension in outgroup stereotypes [52]

ychological distance derived from spatial and temporal distance

periences [78]

lture-specific metaphors: for example, a ‘‘bright’’ smile [167],

d ‘‘rigidity’’ activated by experiences of physical hardness [35]


At the metaphorical level, disease-avoidance mecha-nisms, which evolved to protect against contagious diseasethreats, have been found to overgeneralize to contribute tosocial outgroup prejudice. Huang et al. [59] found thatnegative attitudes towards immigrants decreased afterthe participant (i) washed their hands or (ii) received aninoculation against the H1N1 virus. It is as if satisfying themotive of protection against disease (invasion of the bodyagainst viruses) also satisfied the more abstract social (andmetaphorically related) goal of protecting one’s cultureagainst ‘invasion’ by immigrants.

Emotion regulation

Recent research has shown that successful emotion regu-lation, long thought to be a strictly effortful and delibera-tive process, can occur without the necessity of consciouscontrol [60–63]. In these studies, the goal to regulateemotions is primed outside of the participant’s awarenessthrough presentation of regulation-goal-related words, andis then found to operate nonconsciously to produce thesame effects as deliberate, explicit regulation instructionsfrom the experimenter.

Mauss and colleagues [62] primed emotion control (vsemotion expression) in this way by exposing participants towords related to those categories (e.g., ‘restrained’ foremotion control and ‘boiled’ for emotion expression) in asentence unscrambling task, before participants were giv-en an anger induction experience. The researchers foundthat participants who had been primed with conceptsrelating to emotion control reported experiencing signifi-cantly less anger than participants primed with emotionexpression. Williams et al. [63] similarly primed partici-pants with a reappraisal goal (e.g., transform, change) andshowed that on a stressful task, those participants gaveevidence of lower cardiovascular emotional reactivity,measured as a change in heart rate from baseline, com-pared to nonprime control group participants. Moreover,the success of the nonconscious reappraisal manipulationwas equivalent to that in a separate condition in whichparticipants were given explicit instructions to reappraisethe stressful stimuli.

Moral judgments

When left unregulated, automatic emotional reactions playa significant role in moral reasoning. Although traditionaltheories of human morality have long emphasized the roleof conscious, controlled processes in moral reasoning andjudgment, recent research has highlighted more automaticinfluences on moral cognition (e.g., [64]). One of the mostprominent advances concerns the role that the emotion ofdisgust plays in moral reasoning, a link proposed severaltimes in the past decade but solidified only recently byempirical findings (see [65,66]). For example, even childrenas young as 5 years of age refer to moral transgressions as‘disgusting’ [67]. Feelings of moral disgust, such as whenone is the target of unfairness in an economic game, lead tothe involuntary activation of the same facial muscles usedin the expression of physical disgust [68]. Inducing feelingsof disgust, either through a bitter taste [69] or a disgustingsmell or messy work area [70], automatically (without theparticipants’ awareness of this influence) increases the

severity of a wide variety of moral judgments. Moreover,both trait [71] and state [72] disgust sensitivity are associ-ated with more negative implicit attitudes toward homo-sexuals. These findings demonstrate that disgust reactionsare powerful influences on moral cognition outside of peo-ple’s awareness or control.

In light of such findings, theorists have proposed thatmorality may be innate [73], or wired into the mind [74] asa ‘Universal Moral Grammar’ [75], and empirical findingshave revealed that rule-based moral judgments (e.g., thatharming others is morally wrong) are governed by auto-matic cognitive processes. For example, manipulations ofcognitive load [76] and time constraints, both of whichimpair controlled but not automatic processes, have beenfound to decrease utilitarian moral judgments (i.e., thosethat maximize benefits and minimize costs for affectedindividuals), but not rule-based judgments [77]. Cognitiveload also reduces concern for the moral domains of author-ity, loyalty, and purity, which suggests that these mightrequire controlled processes, but not for harm or fairness,which suggests that these may be more automatic.

In addition to research demonstrating that some com-ponents of moral cognition are more intuitive and auto-matic, other research demonstrates that, even when moraljudgments result from controlled processes, they can beinfluenced automatically – without awareness or intention– by factors that are logically irrelevant to the judgment.For example, a moral transgression occurring a year in thefuture is experienced as more immoral than that same actsaid to occur tomorrow, and, similarly, a morally good actoccurring a year in the future seems more virtuous [78]. Inaddition to imagining an actual event occurring in the nearor far future, mere incidental priming of temporal distanceleads participants to report that they will act more altru-istically and judge the selfish behavior of others moreharshly [79].

Motivation and goal pursuit

One of the more active automaticity research areas hasbeen that on nonconscious goal pursuit. Building on earliertheoretical ideas that goal representations could be acti-vated directly by environmental features (i.e., primed), justas for any other mental representation [80,81], and thenoperate in pursuit of the desired end-state outside of theperson’s awareness [82], the recent research has fleshedout how goals and motivations can operate in the absenceof conscious guidance. In doing so, this research has greatlyadvanced our knowledge about the mechanisms of motiva-tion in general, because nonconscious goal pursuit hasbeen shown to be highly similar to conscious modes of goalpursuit, both in the outcomes produced, as well as how theyare produced.

The original studies [82,83] found that primed, noncon-scious goals produced the same outcomes – not only be-havioral, but cognitive (e.g., memory structures) andmotivational (e.g., resumption of interrupted tasks; [84])as well – and did so using the same subgoals and brainregions as during conscious pursuit of the same goal[85,86]. These observations led to the prediction that un-conscious goal pursuit must make use of the same execu-tive functions and working memory resources as used in

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conscious goal pursuit, in order to selectively attend tosome features of the environment over others and thentransform those to suit the current needs of the task [87].Subsequent research has documented and validated thisprediction. Hassin and colleagues [88,89] showed that anonconsciously operating achievement goal serves to in-crease working memory capacity on the serial reactiontime task and also to significantly improve performanceon the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, both standard mea-sures of executive functioning. Across six experiments,Marien and colleagues [90] subliminally primed a varietyof goals (e.g., socializing, academic performance) and foundthat they all took attentional capacity (executive proces-sing resources) away from an ongoing conscious task (e.g.,proofreading). In a major review of this literature, Dijk-sterhuis and Aarts [91] concluded that unconscious goalpursuit makes use of attention and executive processes infurtherance of the goal, just as conscious goal pursuit does,but in the absence of conscious awareness of the pursuit.

Many studies have shown that one way in which non-conscious goal pursuit furthers goal attainment is bychanging the valence or positivity of environmental sti-muli, making goal-facilitating objects (including peoplewho are helpful in one’s attainment of the goal) morepositively evaluated. Because this positive evaluation islinked with stronger approach motivations [92], it natu-rally increases approach motivational tendencies towardsthose goal-facilitating objects and people [93,94]. For ex-ample, Fitzsimons and Fischbach [95] found that, when theachievement goal is primed, participants report that theylike their study friends more than their party friends, butwhen the socializing goal is primed, they now like theirparty friends more. However, although such changes inevaluation may further the pursuit of the current goal, theymay not be in the long-term best interest of the individual[96]. Hill and Durante [97] found that the nonconsciousactivation of the mating goal causes women to view thehealth consequences of tanning booths and dangerous dietpills as less negative and personally threatening, leadingthem to report, while that goal was active, stronger inten-tions to use them.

Nonconscious goal pursuits also map onto the rewardstructure of the environment in an automatic manner.Extensive research by Aarts, Custers, Holland and theircolleagues has shown that evaluative conditioning of posi-tive affect (unrelated semantically to the goal) to the goalrepresentations increases both the probability that goalwill be pursued, over other possible goal pursuits, and theamount of effort that will be expended in pursuit of thatgoal [98,99]. The role of positive affect in increasing prob-ability of nonconscious goal pursuit would seem to berelated to the repeated finding that subliminal primingof product brand names does not increase consumption ofthat product unless the person is currently in a relatedneed state (e.g., tired, for an energy pill supplement; see[100–102]). The need state thus works to increase thereward value of the product. The effect of pairing positiveaffect with a goal is also pronounced in the case of self-symbols or stimuli related (often merely incidentally) tothe individual’s identity or self-concept [99]. This may helpto explain the ‘name letter effect’, in which people are more

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likely to pursue careers and move to locations that inci-dentally share letters (especially initials) of their name(e.g., [103]), or other aspects of identity, such as birthdays.For example, Walton and colleagues [104] found that highschool students obtain higher mathematics class scores atthe end of the school year if they have read about amathematics prize-winning student at another schoolwho happens to share their birthday.

Just as the probability of nonconscious goal activationincreases with the reward or incentive structure of theenvironment (as sensed by the amount of positive affectassociated with the goal representation), so does thestrength of the goal map onto one’s success at pursuingit [105,106]. Following the priming of the achievementgoal, for instance, ‘success’ at an easy anagram filler taskincreases both positive mood and how hard participantswork on a subsequent verbal task; ‘failure’ on a hard(impossible) filler anagram task has the opposite effects.Success also increases the positivity of automatic attitudestowards the goal, whereas failure decreases them [107]. Allof these effects serve to automatically perpetuate the goalinto future situations by increasing the probability ofpursuing goals that produce rewards that one is likely tobe successful at attaining and decreasing goals that are lowin relative reward value and which one is less likely toobtain, either because of deficits in personal ability orbecause environmental situations somehow preventattempts at the goal [108].

The lack of awareness of pursuing nonconsciously oper-ating goals has important consequences for the individual’sunderstanding of what he or she was doing. Bargh et al.[82] found that immediately following a task, participantswho had been unconsciously pursuing the goal of coopera-tion could not report, at better than chance levels, howmuch they had just cooperated, whereas participants whohad been consciously pursuing the cooperation goal wereable to accurately report on their degree of cooperation.Bar-Anan and colleagues [109] showed in four experimentsthat participants misattribute their behaviors that weredriven by nonconscious goals to other plausible, conscious-ly accessible reasons. For example, following priming of themating goal, male participants were more likely to chooseto work with a female tutor on Topic A than a male tutor onTopic B, but later explained their choice in terms of greaterinterest in that topic (which had been randomly pairedwith either the male or female tutor). These erroneous self-understandings were shown to have long-term behavioralconsequences, as well. In another study, participantsprimed with a helping goal were more likely to choose toplay a version of a trivia game in which they would be ableto give help to another participant. This ‘help’ version wasrandomly described as either ‘easy’ or ‘challenging’; if ithad been described as ‘challenging’, the participant wassubsequently more likely to choose reading material abouthow to pursue personal challenges over other availablereading material.

As with other active behavior-producing concepts, non-consciously activated goal representations are subject tocontagion and projection effects (see next section). Peoplenaturally understand and perceive other people’s behaviorin terms of their current purposes, that is, the goals they

Table 3. Automatic processes observed in infancy/early childhood

Domain Summary of findings

Objects Infants (i.e., before 12 months) understand that objects, but not substances, are solid (i.e., they cannot

occupy the same space at the same time) and cohesive (i.e., they persist as single entities; [168]).

Numbers Infants appear to possess one core system for representing small quantities as individual objects and a second

system for representing quantities as approximate numerical values [169].

Space Infants show sensitivity to distance, angles, and direction, and can utilize both egocentric and allocentric

frames of reference to navigate their spatial environment [170].

Agents Infants organize the actions of agents in terms of those agents’ goals [120].

Social evaluation Infants prefer prosocial to antisocial agents [171].

False beliefs Children younger than 4 years fail to verbally express knowledge of an agent’s false belief, yet infants

demonstrate false-belief understanding on looking-time and other implicit measures [172,173].

Priming Priming can induce social behavior in toddlers and young children, such as helping in 18-month-olds

[124] and affiliative imitation following social exclusion in 5-year-olds [125].

Implicit attitudes By 12 months of age infants can distinguish faces by gender and race [174], and by 5 years of age children

demonstrate implicit racial attitudes that that are identical to those of adults [131].


are trying to accomplish ([110]; also [111]). The increase inaccessibility produced by this perceptual activity makes itmore likely that the perceiver will adopt and pursue thatgoal him- or herself (‘goal contagion’; [112]). Moreover, theincrease in goal accessibility for a goal that the individual iscurrently pursuing is more likely to be used to interpret andunderstand the relevant behavior of others (‘goal projection’;[113]). Subsequent research by Loersch and colleagues [114]and Leander and colleagues [115] demonstrated some im-portant limits to such goal contagion effects: (i) they occurmore strongly when perceiving members of one’s social in-groups than out-groups, and (ii) they are less likely to occur ifthey conflict with one of the person’s fundamental motives,such as autonomy and self-regard.

Development: automatic and unconscious processes in

early childhood

Some of the most fascinating developments in automaticityrelate to the cognition and behavior of infants and youngchildren (Table 3). An emerging perspective in cognitivescience proposes that, rather than beginning life with a‘blank slate’, infants enter the world possessing innatecognitive systems prepared to represent objects, actions,number, space [116], and social partners [117]. The litera-ture has swelled with empirical findings demonstratingthat infants less than 1 year of age show a sophisticatedunderstanding of object persistence [118], number andbasic arithmetic operations [119], as well as other proper-ties of the physical world. However, perhaps the mostremarkable findings concern infants’ understanding ofthe social world.

For example, infants understand that agents, but notobjects, pursue goals [120] and infants will even selectivelyreproduce the goals of actions they observe [121]. (Con-verging evidence in adults supports the primacy of auto-matic and developmentally early goal inferences; see thesection on motivation and goal pursuit above.) Infants asyoung as 6 months show the capacity for social evaluation,choosing to interact with a prosocial character over anantisocial character [122], and infants as young as3 months of age look longer at a prosocial than a controlcharacter [123]. These findings suggest that, even beforetheir first birthday, infants possess the cognitive machin-ery necessary to begin making sense of the physical andsocial world around them.

Further evidence for the automatic nature of theseprocesses has been demonstrated in a series of primingstudies in infants and young children. In a pioneeringstudy, Over and Carpenter [124] showed 18-month-oldinfants photographs of common household objects. Thesephotos included a small priming picture, presented unob-trusively in the corner, that depicted either a prosocialscene (two dolls facing each other) or a neutral scene (twodolls facing apart). A second experimenter then entered theroom and accidentally dropped a handful of sticks. Infantswho had viewed the photos with the prosocial prime werethree times more likely to spontaneously help the secondexperimenter, compared to those who viewed the neutralphotos. A further study [125] primed 5-year-old childrenwith ostracism by showing the children videos of twoanimated geometric shapes on a computer screen thatappeared to ‘exclude’ a third shape from a game, and foundthat children primed with ostracism subsequently engagedin compensatory affiliative behavior (as do adults after thesame manipulation; e.g., [126]) by imitating an experi-menter in an unrelated task following the prime.

The Over and Carpenter demonstrations are particu-larly striking as the children themselves were not excluded– in fact, the prime did not include real people at all, butonly doll figurines and even mere abstract shapesmoving on a screen. These results suggest that youngchildren, prior to having any protracted periods of experi-ence in the social world, possess rich mental representa-tions of sophisticated social behaviors that can beactivated automatically by features of their environments,as through experimental priming manipulations.

Another recent advance in developmental automaticityresearch concerns a veritable explosion of research on theimplicit intergroup attitudes of children. Decades of re-search have revealed that children express a strong explic-it preference for their ingroup that peaks at 7 years of age,but declines shortly thereafter, at approximately the sametime that children begin to realize that such preferentialattitudes violate societal norms [127]. Thus, researchershave begun to explore children’s implicit attitudes bymodifying the Implicit Association Test (IAT; [128]) foruse with children as young as 5 years of age. The resultsfrom these studies are striking: by age five, children fromgroups with high social status are consistently found topossess high levels of implicit pro-ingroup bias, including

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American White children [129], British White children[130], and Japanese children living in Japan [131]. Incontrast, on this test children from groups with low socialstatus show relatively less pro-ingroup bias and in somecases even show pro-outgroup bias (see [132]).

These findings of young children’s implicit attitudesmirror those of adults, who show the same status asym-metry on the IAT [133]. Notably, however, not a singlestudy mentioned above found an age-related change overtime – across all age-groups tested, children show the samelevel of bias on the IAT as adults. Thus, although explicitsocial group attitudes change over time to become moreegalitarian in appearance, implicit social group attitudesfavoring one’s ingroup emerge at very young ages andpersist thereafter through the lifespan.

Interim summaryRecent research on preconscious forms of automaticinfluence have validated and extended previous demon-strations of direct environmental effects on social per-ception, social behavior, and motivation and goalpursuits. The older lines of research have become morerefined and nuanced, with consistent and convergingevidence of important mediators and moderators, suchas the role of the active self-concept in producing behav-ior priming effects. Underlying mechanisms, such as therole played by executive processes and working memoryin unconscious goal pursuit, have helped greatly to de-mystify the theoretically generated, but nonetheless sur-prising, early demonstrations; and emerging researchfindings that even very young children show adult-likeevaluative, priming, and motivational effects is sheddinglight on the evolutionary origins of many automaticprocesses.

Moreover, new and powerful preconscious inputs intosubsequent conscious thought, judgments, and experienceshave been identified, such as the compelling effects of facialappearance on our judgments of others, even for veryimportant decisions such as whom we select to be ourelected representatives in government; and the role playedby perceptual experiences of the physical world and ourown physical sensations influence our higher mental pro-cesses through their associative connections to analogousabstract representations and motivations.

Goal-dependent automaticityGoal-dependent or postconscious automaticity (see [1])concerns skills and efficient thought processes that requirethe goal or intention to engage in them, but, once put inmotion, operate very well with minimal attentional guid-ance. Motor skills, such as those involved in driving a car ortyping a manuscript, can operate, after considerable prac-tice, almost entirely without conscious guidance, but theydo not occur without the initial conscious intention toengage in them. Recently, the idea that consciously formedgoals set the stage for subsequent automatic processes,operating in the service of those goals, but themselves notrequiring any further intention or conscious guidance, hasbeen extended into the domains of complex decision-mak-ing processes and of close relationship formation andmaintenance. In both cases, there is emerging evidence

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that the automatic, unconscious components of the processhave an evolutionary basis.

Decision-making

Traditionally, human decision-making processes havebeen considered a bastion of exclusively conscious anddeliberate thought. It is one of the last domains of psycho-logical research to be examined for automatic and uncon-scious components. However, based in part on concurrentadvances in unconscious motivation research (see above),Dijksterhuis and Nordgren [134] proposed ‘Unconsciousthought theory’ (UTT) and provided initial supportingevidence for the claim that decisions made unconsciouslyare superior in quality to those made consciously. Thisprovocative claim elicited a series of empirical protestsfrom judgment and decision-making researchers, bothmethodological and empirical (see [135] for a review; also[136,137]). Over the past 5 years since the UTT proposal,the dust has settled somewhat and some early conclusionsabout the efficacy, if not the outright superiority, of uncon-scious decision-making seem merited.

Briefly, UTT holds that, after a first period of consciousthought in which the judgment relevant information isacquired (such as the relative merits of different productsor apartments, across several dimensions, such as priceand quality) and conscious intention is formed to make thebest decision (this is why UTT is a form of goal-dependentautomaticity), a period of deliberation using unconsciousthought (while conscious thought is directed elsewhere)produces better quality judgments than does an equallylong period of conscious deliberation. Theoretical reasonsfor this prediction include the greater efficiency of uncon-scious thought and the tendency of conscious thought tounequally weigh some dimensions over others, because ofthe limited focus of conscious thought at any one time.

Although space precludes a complete review of thetheory and the resultant empirical evidence, a recentreview of the available evidence [135] led to the conclusionthat, when multiply relevant dimensions are in play andthe available comparative information is relatively simple(i.e., this apartment is bigger than that one, this producthas a longer warranty than the other one), a period ofunconscious thought consistently produces decisions atleast as good as an equal period of conscious thought. Evendetractors of the theory consistently obtained this outcome.Their complaint was instead that the claim of superiority ofunconscious over conscious thought was not supported intheir studies.

However, in some studies superiority of unconsciousthought was obtained and in precisely those domains thatwere likely to have been important over evolutionary time,prior to the advent of conscious thought processes. Hamand colleagues [138–140] showed consistent superiority ofunconscious over conscious deliberation in three judgmentdomains: guilt (participants were given a complex legalcase and asked for judgments as to who was guilty),utilitarian morality (approving of harmful actions thatnonetheless produced the best consequences), and fairness(in complex job application procedures). Not coincidentally,these happen to be the same domains for which evolution-ary theorists have argued that people possess innate


(unconsciously operating) processing mechanisms, such ascheater detection in social exchange settings [141] and theintuitive-prosecutor mindset to react against transgres-sions of social norms [142].

A welcome development has been second-generationtheory and research which advances beyond the either-or question of ‘which one is better?’ to an examination of theconditions and circumstances in which one is better thanthe other. In what situations and for what types of deci-sions would periods of unconscious thought produce betteroutcomes than deliberate thought? Recently, Nordgrenand colleagues [143] proposed a compromise position, ar-guing that a combination of both conscious and uncon-scious thought processes would solve complex problemsbetter than either type by itself. Conscious thought wasargued to be superior for components of the decision-mak-ing process that involved following rules, whereas uncon-scious thought was superior for those phases involving theaggregation or weighting of the various decision-relevantdimensions. Moreover, they suggested that the best deci-sions would occur when the period of unconscious thoughtfollows the period of conscious deliberation.

Close relationships

Traditionally, research on close relationships has focusedon conscious and deliberate processes that are available tointrospection and reportable to the experimenter – forexample, what people explicitly report as the importantfactors in their degree of attraction to another person. Morerecently, however, research has included a consideration ofpossible automatic or unconscious influences on relation-ship formation, maintenance, and dissolution.

Much of the recent research on automatic processes inclose relationships has focused on automatic methods bywhich one maintains one’s close relationships. When in acommitted romantic relationship, individuals tend to au-tomatically behave in a manner geared toward maintain-ing that relationship, even without any consciousawareness of how their behavior is doing so. For instance,Maner and colleagues [144] found that when one is in arelationship, but not when one is single, one gives membersof the opposite sex less early-stage attention, which has theeffect of reducing that person’s potential threat to one’scurrent relationship. Whereas men who were not currentlyin a committed relationship devoted more early-stage at-tention to attractive others [145] and also displayed higherlevels of testosterone in their presence [146], those maleparticipants who were currently in a committed relation-ship unconsciously responded instead with relative inat-tention to attractive opposite-sex targets [147].

Of course, men do not consciously pick up on fertilitycues, knowing which women are currently at the peakfertility phase of their monthly cycle, but unconsciouslythey do regulate their behavior such that single menunconsciously approach and committed men unconsciouslyavoid fertile women. Men currently in a committed rela-tionship rated a female confederate as least attractivewhen she happened to be highly fertile [147], contra tothe ratings by single men of the same woman. In addition,when there is stress in a relationship, committed individ-uals tend to unconsciously upregulate interpersonal trust

as a maintenance strategy. Participants’ relationshipstress was manipulated by instructions to imagine thattheir partner was going abroad for an extended period oftime. Subsequently, in an unrelated context, their degreeof interpersonal trust was measured either in a trust game(played against an anonymous stranger) or by havingparticipants rate the trustworthiness of unknown faces.Greater relationship stress automatically increased inter-personal trust tendencies [148].

Automatic processes also play a significant role in rela-tionship quality judgments and relationship dissolutiondecisions. Deliberative (conscious) thought no doubt playsa large role in the decision of whether or not to end arelationship (e.g., [149]), but recent research has indicatedthat implicit affect associated with one’s partner alsodirectly predicts relationship satisfaction and indirectlypredicts likelihood of breakup 4 months after the implicitmeasurement was taken [150]. In one study, participants’implicit partner affect was first measured as an implicitbias for the initials in one’s partner’s name, similar to thename-letter effect [103,151], in which positivity towardsone’s own initials is found to be an index of implicit self-esteem (e.g., [152]). Participants rated how aestheticallypleasing was each letter of the alphabet, with implicitpartner affect operationalized as the extent to which theinitials of one’s partner’s name received higher ratingsthan the other letters in the alphabet. Four months later,this measure of implicit partner affect was found to bepositively correlated with relationship satisfaction (but notcommitment), which was in turn correlated with the like-lihood of still being in the relationship.

Concluding remarksThe concept of automaticity has attained a status commen-surate with conscious or controlled information processing,such that both forms of processing now receive researchscrutiny and incorporation into models of nearly all psy-chological phenomena (Box 1). Across the various researchdomains reviewed above, two main developments havetaken place over the past 5 years or so. First, no longeris automaticity assumed to result exclusively from a pro-cess of skill acquisition, in which a process always begins asa conscious and deliberate one, and only with experiencebecomes capable of automatic operation. Second, as point-ed out many years ago by Shiffrin [153], any process ofsufficient complexity to be of interest to social psychologistsinvolves a complex interplay between both controlled (con-scious) and automatic processes.

Extensive conscious and intentional use of a process orconcept is no longer the only observed means to an auto-matic end. The developmental research clearly shows that,even before their first birthday, infants possess the cogni-tive machinery necessary to begin making sense of thephysical and social world around them, casting doubt onthe necessity of skill acquisition for at least certain pro-cesses, such as social evaluation and the motivation to helpand cooperate with others. The embodiment research alsoshows that the many of the abstract social and psychologi-cal concepts and processes used in adulthood grow natu-rally out of very early learning of the physical environment,resulting in strong associative connections that exert their

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Box 1. Questions for future research

� What are the automatic, unconscious motives operating in very

young children, other than the already-demonstrated helping and

affiliation motives?

� In addition to studying adult-like automatic processes in very

young children, could such processes be found in non-human

primates, as well?

� Do automatic processes involve different neural underpinnings

than the same processes when engaged in consciously? Could

such comparative neuroscience research shed light on the brain

regions or circuits underlying consciousness?

� How do these various automatic processes influence each other?

Do some, such as unconscious goal pursuit, dominate others,

such as behavior contagion, when they suggest conflicting

responses?

� How are the various automatic effects reviewed in this article

influenced and moderated by ongoing conscious states and

processes?

� Can a person prime him- or herself? Does conscious awareness of

the priming attempt interfere with it or would it be possible to

prime oneself to perform better, feel happier, be friendlier?

� What are the underlying mechanisms that produce embodiment

effects on social judgment, social behavior, and social goal

pursuits, and what are the limits and constraining conditions on

those effects?

� Why do we draw so many implicit inferences about a person from

his or her face, with so much agreement across perceivers in

those inferences, and also have so much confidence in their

accuracy, when facial appearance does not actually seem to be

very diagnostic of those inferred traits or abilities?

� Are there automatic components and influences in other aspects

or stages of close relationships, such as in reconciliation and

dissolution (‘make-up’ and ‘break-up’)?

� How do automatic processes influence health-related behavior?

Can health-supportive automatic behavioral influences be devel-

oped to help improve mental as well as physical health?


influence throughout the rest of one’s life without theinvolvement of any conscious or effortful practice of thesemetaphoric connections. Similarly, innate emotional (e.g.,disgust) and motivational (survival and safety, reproduc-tion) processes are found to exert unconscious and auto-matic influences on social judgments and behavior. Thus, ifthere is one take home message in the automaticity re-search of the past decade, it is that skill acquisition is notthe only route to automaticity.

The initial analysis of automaticity into preconsciousand postconscious varieties [1] was meant to highlight theinterplay between conscious and unconscious processes:preconscious forms serve as unfelt automatic input intocontrolled processes, such as decisions and behavioralchoices, whereas postconscious forms are automatic, unin-tended consequences of conscious thought processes. Majorrecent reviews of the causal role of conscious processes[154] and recent integrations of the conscious self-regula-tion and the unconscious priming literatures [155] havesimilarly concluded that unconscious processes causeconscious ones, which in turn put further unconsciousprocesses into motion. As Baumeister and Masicampo[154] concluded, unconscious processes are the main trig-gers of social behavior, but conscious processes play animportant causal role as well, capable of changingand redirecting the unconscious behavioral or judgmentalimpulse (for compelling demonstrations of this interplaysee [156]). For example, the most recent research isshowing that subliminal priming effects disappear when

602

participants are led to (consciously) make external attribu-tions for the priming content [157], and thus the extent towhich people effortfully attribute their thoughts to internalor external causes moderates automatic priming effects.

The recognition of the mutual importance of consciousand unconscious processes in the production of higherorder cognition and complex interpersonal behavior hasalso shed light on the free will debate, at least withinpsychology. It has become clearer now that psychologistsand philosophers have different things in mind when theyuse the term ‘free will’. For philosophy, the term refers toone’s conscious will as an original, uncaused cause; inpsychology, by contrast, the issue for 100 years now (see[158]) has been instead that of the causal role of consciousthought. When psychologists have talked about free will,historically they have been concerned with the question ofwhether conscious thought participates at all in the causalchain from the environment (and unconscious processes) toresponses such as judgments and behavior – independentlyof whether these conscious thoughts are themselves causedby environmental stimuli and preconsciously automaticprocesses (as, of course, from a scientific perspective theymust be) or not (as held by the metaphysical notion oforiginal causation in philosophy; see [159]). Based on thepsychological definition at least, the empirical evidence isclear that free will does exist [154,156]. Conscious thought iscausal and it often puts automatic processes into play;similarly, automatic processes regularly cause and influ-ence conscious thought processes. These two fundamentalforms of human information processing work together, handin glove, and indeed one would not be able to functionwithout the support and guidance of the other.

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